An implant is an artificial tooth implanted into an alveolus when a tooth is lost or damaged. The implant has the following advantages: it allows only a lost or damaged tooth to be replaced without sacrificing adjacent teeth, it allows the artificial tooth to function like a natural tooth, it looks and feels like a natural tooth, it allows a patient to speak clearly after an operation, and it quickly improves a patient's oral health.
A general implant comprises a fixture embedded in the gum, an abutment fixed to the fixture by using a screw, and a crown fixed onto the abutment so as to give an external form of an artificial tooth. In this case, the abutment supports the crown.
According to Korean Patent No. 10-0981463, the abutment (hereinafter, referred to as a processing object) transfers a load from a crown to a fixture; that is, it functions to transfer a load to the jawbone. For this reason, the processing object should be manufactured considering not only a size, a shape, and a contour of an artificial tooth but also the occlusion with adjacent teeth and an opposing tooth (an upper tooth or lower tooth), and dental characteristics, conditions of the gum, and the gum line of an individual.
Accordingly, as for the processing object material of the implant, customized products manufactured so as to correspond to patient's teeth are preferred to handed-down products having fixed sizes.